


Reincarnation

by amoeve



Series: Zutara Month 2015 [10]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tale Style, Reincarnation, Spirit World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 19:31:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5428052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoeve/pseuds/amoeve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Koh the Face Stealer offers terrible reincarnation and relationship advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reincarnation

Not everything in the Spirit World wants to stay there. Sometimes, things and people thirst to make a difference.

Tui and La, back beyond the beginning, made their way to the physical realm to push and pull the waters of the world. Koh the Face Stealer remembers disagreeing at the time, because the Spirit World would be dull without them.

“Besides,” he’d sighed. “you’re denying me the chance to add your faces to my collection.” And he’d flicked, ostentatiously, between a few of his favourites, savouring their last moments as they became his own face.

They’d ignored him, focused only on each other and their dance, and had passed through the portals, and the world had changed.

There are others, though, who come the other way. Sometimes, mortals cause enough trouble and gather enough energy around themselves that the physical world can’t contain them any more.

The Blue Spirit is an anarchist, an agitator, a revolutionary who is found fighting wherever there is injustice. When he is reborn, there is a time of great change in the world.

Koh finds him one day, when the world is all out of balance because there’s too much fire and no Avatar to regulate the flames, staring at a shimmering patch of water in a swamp. Koh rarely leaves his tree these aeons, so he’s a little offended that the Blue Spirit is too preoccupied with his thoughts to say hello.

“Blue Spirit,” he croons, and the Spirit tilts his head up. Even here, as an essence of energies waiting to be reborn, he wears an oni mask. Koh would just love to find out what’s behind it, and see if it’s worth taking.

“Face Stealer.”

If Koh had friends, the Blue Spirit would be one, because frankly other people get a little uptight when they think he’s going to take away their faces.

Well. He _will_ , because he doesn’t get many chances to expand his collection these days. But that doesn’t mean that people have to be rude about it.

Masked, though, the Blue Spirit is safe, and speaks his mind freely. “I’m tired of this tranquillity,” he announces, folding his arms. “It’s past time I was up in the world again. There’s a war, and plenty of injustice to be fighting.”

Koh slinks around behind the Blue Spirit and gazes at the water. A milky mist floats under the surface, and Koh can see an outline of continents and glimmering golden points of light. “No faces,” he shakes his head. “You bore me, Blue.”

“I need to be up there, doing something,” the Blue Spirit fumes, and Koh’s quite sad he can’t see his friend’s frown. Rumour is that the Blue Spirit was handsome, once, but his face was scarred during the revolution that he martyred himself for. After that, Koh’s heard, his face was intense, inspiring, unquiet in its ruined beauty. A reminder.

“Why _don’t_ you, Blue?” Koh watches the waters swirl into a map of the physical world.

“Because _she_ doesn’t want to go!”

The anguish would be delicious if Koh could see it and steal it and sup on it forever. As it is, it’s just sounds and syllables. Still, he coils himself around the Blue Spirit and peers into the mask, looking for the hint of eyes widening, anything that shows there are features moving behind the mask.

The Blue Spirit blinks at him, and Koh rolls this face’s eyes, letting the Avatar’s lover do the speaking for him. The Blue Spirit’s love for the Painted Lady is an old, old fire that Koh would love to warm himself with.  “Some spirits are reborn all the time,” Koh says, untangling himself. “Beholden to nobody.”

“We go together,” the Blue Spirit says, pained. “We made a choice. I get… reckless, without her. Too wild. And without me, she’s too likely to sit back and watch the rivers flow by, and not harness her powers to make a difference.”

“Perhaps it’s time to make a change?” asks Koh, who would never admit that he’s bored of his marsh and his tree and his stagnant collection of faces, but who’s desperate for a little thrill nonetheless. “What if she’s holding the revolution back?”

The Blue Spirit leans down and picks a point of light. “A baby will be born soon. A prince. I could…”

“I thought you usually picked the poor ones?” Koh asks, marginally interested now that the Blue Spirit seems to be choosing someone of breeding, and therefore, more likely to wash. And to be handsome. He selects a face he likes in times of conflict – a warrior who came down to fight him, oh, so long ago.

“There’s something about this one,” the Blue Spirit says. “A feeling…” he tilts his head. “And he isn’t the heir to the throne, so I wouldn’t be overstepping my bounds…”

Koh rolls the eyes of his _noh_ mask. “So many rules.” Because he knows it isn’t, in fact, a rule – it’s a guideline, something that the Blue Spirit has learned is generally better after many, many deaths in causes that he’s started. But that’s none of Koh’s business. He sets off back to his tree, wondering whether it’s worth lying in wait near one of the portals, just in case a morsel of mortal should drop into his lap. “Well, when you make up your mind, bring me a new face.”

When it all goes wrong, after Koh also fails to steal the child’s face off the Avatar’s current body – and that rankles, it really does, but Koh’s willing to admit when he’s been beaten – he finds the Painted Lady weeping at the waterside.

She freezes in place when he appears, her lips compressed into a line to keep from crying, to keep her face from Koh. “He went without me, and he’s lost his way,” is all she says. “We’re out of balance, and now we may never be together again.”

Koh is angry that she’s hiding her grief from him. It’s been a long time since he’s added a woman’s face to his collection. “How do you know that that isn’t what he wanted all along? He was desperate to go out and do something, not just wallow around down here in the water.”

A tear spills down her cheek, and she lifts her hand – drawing a veil across her nose and mouth, because she is a filthy cheat. She knows Koh’s rules, and she just doesn’t care that he wants her face. “You spoke to him,” she says, and her voice shakes with rage. “You sent him up there alone.”

“I did nothing of the kind.” Koh flicks his face to the baboon, to indicate what he thinks of her. “But if he’s up there having fun, he really owes me a glimpse of his new face.”

She turns her back on him. “Then I suppose it’s time I found a way through. But if I’m born to a mortal, there isn’t time for me to find him before it’s too late…” she leans over the shimmering pool.

Koh has always found souls _so_ much more boring than the faces they wear.

He turns back when he hears her laugh – and is furious that she’s schooled her face to stillness when he catches sight of her. “What,” he asks, idling closer, “do you find so very amusing?”

“Watch and learn,” she says, and then she slips into the water and vanishes – and in the shimmering surface he sees a point of gold glimmer, he sees a girl as expressive as the ocean with its passion and imperfections and impatience.

Frankly, he is extremely jealous of the Painted Lady’s new face, and it isn’t nice of her to taunt him like this.

He angles his gaze along the threads of probability and memory, and sees why the Painted Lady picked this one. She’s met the Blue Spirit’s body, and it’s already gone horribly wrong, because they chased and hated and betrayed each other.

“Delightful,” he croons to himself. “I do love a tragic affair.”

But the future isn’t set in stone. It hasn’t been written yet. And the Painted Lady and the Blue Spirit do tend to end up on the same side, after all.

He yawns to himself and decides to go take a nap until someone has something interesting to say. “I hope it ends terribly,” he says to the face in the water, but he has a sinking feeling that it’s actually going to turn out quite well.

**Author's Note:**

> Koh the Face Stealer: definitely not your sassy neighbourhood bitch.


End file.
